Will Hill

Will Hill For media enquiries please contact the Press Team
Emeritus Associate Professor of Graphic Design
Faculty:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
School:
Cambridge School of Art
Location:
Cambridge
Areas of Expertise:
Graphic design and typography

Will is a specialist in typography and graphic design, typeface design, print and design history.

[email protected]

Background

From a professional background in graphic design and illustration, Will's current practice and research activity reflects a wide-ranging fascination for type, letters and the visual use of language across both the applied and the fine arts. This includes work on vernacular lettering, the design of experimental display typefaces and research on revival and historic reference in type design. His work also reflects an ongoing interest in visual poetics , concrete poetry and the use of language in public art.

Will's published work includes the book The Complete Typographer, published by Thames and Hudson in the UK and Pearson in the USA. He's also contributed chapters to Font: The Sourcebook, Art and Text, the Phaidon Compendium of Graphic Design and the forthcoming Handbook of the English Writing System, to be published by Routledge in 2015. He has given numerous conference papers at national and international level on typography, design education and related subjects, and his work is widely published in both academic and professional journals.

Will's digital prints have been exhibited at the Plus International Design Expo in Birmingham and at university galleries in Cambridge, Bristol, Derby and the Universidade do Porto, Portugal; they've also been published in the print journal Ultrabold and the book Hand-made Graphics (Rotovision).

Research interests
  • Typography
  • Typeface design
  • Visual poetics
  • Type in illustration
  • Type and printing history
Qualifications
  • MA Typeface Design, University of Reading
  • BA/SIAD Graphics, Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology
Memberships, editorial boards
  • Atypi (Association Typographique Internationale)
  • Wynken de Worde society
  • Letter Exchange
  • Friends of St Bride’s
  • Committee of the Graphic Design Educators Network
Selected recent publications

Hill, W., 2010. The Complete Typographer. London: Thames and Hudson.

Recent presentations and conferences

Sacred and Profane, International Conference of the Image, Chicago 2012.

Beyond Classification, AtypI, 2012, Amsterdam.

Type and Tactility, Typecon, 2011, New Orleans.

Painted Words, Typotage, 2011, Museum fur Druck-Kunst, Leipzig.

Words and Space, Text and dimensionality, AtypI, 2010, Dublin.

The Typographer as Reader, Typecon, 2009, Atlanta.